Writing Slumps & How Much They Suck

Well, it’s pretty much the last week of NaNoWriMo and I only wrote a few times during the first week. Pretty much: I gave up. It’s not that I didn’t like what I was writing because I worked on this story earlier in the year, it’s just I’m so drained of energy after working 8-10 hours that I have no oomph to think about writing.

I find that slumps in general just suck. I’m in a huge reading and writing slump and it makes me sad because I absolutely loved doing both at the beginning of the year before I started my full time job; now it just kind of feels like a chore to do either.

When you’re writing a story, at least from my experience, you become engulfed in that world and you want to know more about your own characters, the world in which they live, how society, magic, whatever works in that world. I know when I was writing this story back in March or April, I was so in love with it. I was on a roll and I managed to reach my goal of 50,000 words written – it was awesome!

And then soon after that, after Camp NaNoWriMo ended, I slowed down to the point I stopped writing. It’s not that I didn’t want to continue my story – I knew where I wanted it to go, what plot points I wanted to add, etc – but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it since I didn’t have a word goal to work toward anymore.

I think that for me, I need that word count goal to work toward. So you’d think that with NaNoWriMo I’d be totally set, right? Well, I hadn’t written for so long at that point that writing was 1) refreshing, but 2) was also a pain. I had to pick up where I left off, and I wasn’t super happy with what I had written and I didn’t want to rewrite until I reach the editing stage.

Unfortunately that means that I’ve put off actually completing much of any writing for this month. I wrote over 5,000 words for this NaNoWriMo, which is awesome, but it still wasn’t enough for me to be happy with.

I think that part of the problem is my job, as I’ve stated, but it’s also just me. I’ve become incredibly lazy when it comes to my passions and that alone scares me. It’s incredibly hard for me to focus on what I’m reading lately, and I think that’s translating over to my writing.

Nowadays I just want to sit on YouTube all day and watch videos, or listen to music, or watch Netflix. It’s so frustrating and it upsets me, but I also don’t do much to change it.

So what about getting out of a slump? What about getting out of a writing slump and pushing through to finish the story?

Well, I’m going to seriously look at what’s important to me and try to figure out some sort of schedule or something to work for me.

What about you? If you’re a writer, do you feel like you get stuck often, or do you just chug through to the end? Let me know!